35 weeks, 75 miles and pacing my brother going above marathon distance in training

One of my first memories of running as a child is being happy after going 4 miles or so, then immediately pissed off when my Dad used to drop me back at our house and then head out for the same route again without me. There was no chance of me doing another 4 at that stage, just as there was absolutely none that my Dad would settle for finishing his running for the day with my stop, start, walk effort!

I need to learn if I offer to do parts of my run with other people and then tell them that what is a big effort for them only equates to half or less of my training for that day, this will either piss them off too or spark something in them.

I had planned a few weeks ago to try fit in a 35-40 mile run either this week or next week and offered my brother Ben he could join me for 5 laps of 5.4 miles of my 7 lap effort when it occurs and this could be his longest training run before the 6hr Cakeathon event next month.

My brother is too polite to tell me if this pissed him off as well but I got a message from him mid week that he would be joining me for all 7 laps.

My midweek running was buoyed by this, I had aimed to do 14 laps of 5.4 route over the course of the week and could no longer chicken out of doing 7 now Ben had committed to joining for the full thing. I did one lap on Wednesday morning followed by two on Thursday and three on Friday. This meant if everything went to plan yesterday I would only need one lap today to finish the week. I had suffered with a sore throat and general man-flu type feeling of death but was adamant I was finishing all 7 laps and not getting dropped on any hills by Ben in the process!

We set off at noon and turned the kitchen surfaces into a makeshift aid station complete with flapjacks, bananas, sandwiches, gels, lemon Swiss roll and squash/beer in the fridge.

The first 4 laps were pretty comfortable and I was pleased to hold back in terms of what I ate during this part. We agreed to have a beer after each lap for the last 3. Lap 5 felt a bit harder to hold the pace for but I was pleased this got Ben over marathon distance, even if only by a mile.

Lap 6 was up there with my toughest running efforts from Paris by Night to keep pace. I had selfishly set a target of managing all 7 laps individually in under 1 hour each. I didn’t want to have finished a 1/3 of my training for a 100 and be unable to cover barely over 1/3 of it at a slightly faster pace than I’d be aiming to do on race day in 8 months time. This doesn’t take into account the elevation in the 5.4 mile route being worse, but I’m hardly going to seek out a flatter place to train! Ben really surprised me coming up Churwell Hill on this lap and every time I thought I’d pushed slightly ahead, he would catch up and hold the pace.

I was able to get the last lap barely under the hour and despite trying to fly off ahead of Ben at the start of this lap, he was able to catch me after about a mile and we ran together for the majority of this last bit.

I finished the week with my solitary lap this morning. I had a podcast to keep me company and settled into what felt like a slightly slower pace than last night. I was pleased to force myself out the door and manage to reach the 75 mile target that felt so difficult at the start of the week.